


Weighing the Balance

by methylviolet10b



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Introspection, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-27
Updated: 2013-07-27
Packaged: 2017-12-21 11:46:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/899948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/methylviolet10b/pseuds/methylviolet10b
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Watson learned more than medicine at medical school.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Weighing the Balance

**Author's Note:**

> Written for JWP #26: **The Golden Mean:** the desirable middle between two extremes, one of excess and the other of deficiency.  
>  **Warnings** : Introspection with no hint of a plot in sight. **And absolutely no beta.** This was written in a complete rush. You have been warned.  
> 

  
  
  
  
  
One of the first things they tried to teach me in medical school – and one of the lessons it took me longest to learn – is the concept of balance. Finding the proper mix of the heartfelt desire to assist those in your care, and the professional detachment that preserves your health and sanity is one part of it, perhaps even the easiest part. Another balance that must be achieved is the correct tension between the medical desire to know, to _cure_ , and the humane compassion to let the patient’s needs predominate and dictate treatment choices – or the lack of treatment, if that is truly best. Pride and humility are ever at odds when you are a doctor, as are patience and determination, ambition and practicality, accounting finances and the final accounting to a higher authority. All this you must learn in order to succeed that place where balancing life and death is natural, instinct, something you can do no matter how exhausted you are, how humble or exalted your patient, how routine or extraordinary the circumstances.  
  
I took these lessons from Netley to the battlefields of Asia, from charity wards to private practice. I was never a perfect student, but they served me well nonetheless, and I like to think that I served _them_ well, those that I treated, even those that I could not save.  
  
In my years with Sherlock Holmes, I learned yet more lessons. In the beginning, my lack of health and subsequent dullness served as an unwitting balance to Holmes’ extremes of mood. Our mutual deficiency of funds led to our amusing each other with the excesses we possessed; my curiosity and questions, his quick intellect and matchless observations. As I grew stronger, we complemented each other further: my stolid dependability against his quicksilver deductions; my tendency to attribute the best of motivations to the majority of people we met, particularly women, versus his general misogyny and cynicism; his mastery of finance against my lamentable lack of sense (particularly when it came to gambling); my stubborn refusal to turn a blind eye to the danger of his drugs in battle against his reliance on the needle.  
  
We have never found an ideal balance between us, any more than I achieved perfection in the trade-offs they tried to teach me in medical school. But I have come closer with him to that golden state of harmony that can exist between two souls than I ever have with any other human being. And though he has never said so – would never say so – I believe he also finds this true of me.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted July 26, 2013


End file.
